Getting To Back and Beyond

After my mother died in 2009, I wrote on an internet messageboard about how some particular kinds of music had helped me get through that difficult time. In particular, I wrote about the effect that the Sigur Ros album, 'Takk...' had on me as I negotiated the grieving process. A few days later, one of my online friends (what, exactly, is the word for someone you've never met who you only know because you share an enthusiasm for a radio presenter?) sent me some music which he thought would strike a chord with me.

Among them were Johann Johannsson's 'Fordlandia' and 'IBM 1401: A User's Manual'. I listened, as I did to everything he recommended, and I was immediately struck by how Johannsson's music was exactly the kind of music I like - as if it had been written expressly to fill a gap in my experience of the world. I find it at once calming and deeply emotional; soothing music to write to and an utterly engrossing physical experience which requires my full attention. How thrilling it has been over the last few years to hear Johannsson's music appear on film soundtracks - I am firmly of the opinion that both Sicario and Arrival are lifted from the ranks of merely 'good films' to something approaching greatness by their scores - and how fascinating it has been to hear the evolution of Johannsson's soundscapes.

As with all truly great composers, Johannsson could change the way you look at the world - his music had a universality and profound humanity to it; he could soundtrack experiences you will never have, and he could do so in a way which allowed your imagination to illuminate that which might otherwise be incomprehensible. He used age-old musical structures in new and surprising ways, and he embraced the modern without ever losing that key quality of all great composers - the ability to write music which you feel as much as hear. It's the way his music makes me feel which has affected me so strongly today; that and the fact that this was not another aging musician at the end of a long career leaving us, but a composer in his prime, with who knows how much more wonderful music to come which we will never now hear.

Avid readers of this blog (that'll be me, pretty much) might be wondering what, exactly, I've been doing these past couple of years. There was a book, then another one seemed to be reaching some kind of readiness, then - nothing.

The answer, as so often in life, is that there has been no one thing which has pushed me off schedule; life just got in the way - any writer will recognise that. Since last we met (barring a couple of posts down there which I've imported from my Tumblr pages), Shore Leave seemed to be more or less done, so why, you may ask, hasn't it emerged into the world? Well, it's a little complicated.

Shore Leave update:

It's done, and I'm almost happy with it. The trouble is, there's a lot of meaning packed into that 'almost'. A couple of years ago, I had the marvellous Bryan Tomasovich do a developmental edit on it, and he was enormously helpful, pointing out the areas where work was needed, (and being encouragingly kind about the rest of it) - I thought about it for a while, and then several things happened at once: we moved from Prince George to Victoria, there were all the usual things which go along with that process - new house, new job, new school for Conor, and the book sat on the back burner for a bit.

There are those who, on reading that, will exclaim that I should have just got on with it any way, but there was another problem.

The more I thought about Shore Leave and Bryan's comments, the more I realised that it needed a more substantial rewrite than at first appeared. This would mean effectively a second complete ground-up reconstruction, as the key weakness is that a minor character needs to become much more the antagonist of the story - this will work, it will make it all stronger, and 'll be happy about it when it's done, it's just that...

It's just that, having lived in my head for so long, I had no more mental energy to give another reworking of the story. It will rise again, and be better for this process, but as a way of easing me back into writing, it's a non-starter.

So, what now?

I have played about with the website (you might have noticed); in doing so, I hit upon the idea of refreshing the 50 Musical Memories to make them more interactive (and to fix many of the broken links), so I'm doing that, and I'm working on importing another two music-based projects which I've posted in other places over the years (I looked at 'Rediscovering Rush' yesterday, it's about 60,000 words as it stands; it'll take a while) - both of those will get rewrites as I go, and will appear on here as categories for those who are interested.

What about writing books?

I'm doing that, too. While Shore Leave sits there maturing, I'm actively writing two other stories, tentatively entitled A Little Bird Told Me and The Tip Run - both have a plot, a structure, and some substantive writing behind them; the former is taking shape more quickly than the latter; I'll be focusing on them just as soon as I get all the other stuff tidied away.

There's also a vague idea forming which looks like it might have a bit more of a science fiction concept; it's a great concept, but I can't fit a story into it just yet. I'll get there, though.

So, I'm not being idle; I am suffering a little from the whole 'too many things to choose from' problem, but I'm getting there. I'm setting myself a target of posting in here at least once a week - but I've said that before...

A few weeks ago, I saw the following question: “ Is The Band’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down now part of The Forbidden Music canon? “. To which I instinctively replied: “Absolutely not!” I was a little indignant that the question had even been asked, but on reflection, I realised that it was the reaction of a writer; an artist’s instinctive defence of art. And I wondered.

First of all, let me say that I understand the instinct to quietly shun the music of those convicted of vile offences, lest one be thought to be defending the artist. That is not as clear-cut an argument as you might think, of course - those who would defend Wagner for his anti-semitism tend to point to the music as a creation apart from its creator; we might not have wanted to take tea with the man, but we cannot deny the quality of his work - can we say the same for Rolf Harris? I honestly don’t know the answer to that - how do we react to Two Little Boys, which Harris covered, or Tie Me Kanagroo Down, Sport, which he wrote? Do our reactions to those differ? What about the original of the former, or a cover of the latter? Do our reactions depend on the association with a man jailed for predatory sexual offences?

All of which has little or nothing to do with The Band, who stand accused of nothing more than writing and performing a song which is associated with the Confederate forces in the US Civil War. I’m choosing my words carefully, here - ‘associated with’ is as far as I’m prepared to go, and I believe that goes to the heart of the question.

You can read the lyrics a hundred times, and still not be clear exactly who Virgil Caine was, or what he stood for - he is at once a symbol of the defeated South, a spokesman of the forgotten infantry of every war, and an ordinary man mourning the loss of a brother; he is every soldier who fought on a losing side and every survivor of war who looks around him wondering if there can be a cause worth paying this price.

And he is all these things because of the way he was written. This is the beauty of fiction; it’s up to the reader - the listener in this case - to interpret Virgil Caine, to put our own frame around the picture. Is Virgil Caine a standard bearer for the Rebel cause, as he says his brother was, or was he an unwitting pawn in a game he had no interest in? He is, of course, both of these things, or neither, depending, partly, on the mindset you bring to the song - in one sense, if the song seems to you to be defiantly mourning the lost Confederate cause, you’ll see him one way; if it feels like a lament for the loss of innocence of a child soldier, the historical context will hardly matter.

For myself, I think the song presents us with an uncomfortable picture: just how different were the soldiers on either side? Did many of them believe passionately in the causes they were fighting for, or were they caught up in the supposed romance of battle? Were Union soldiers fighting to end slavery? Were the Confederate troops they faced fighting to retain it, or were they rallying behind a flag because their friends and neighbours were? The song doesn’t try to answer those questions; it leaves you to draw your own conclusions.

And, in the end, I think that’s what art is supposed to do. You might not care to see conflict through the eyes of the defeated, particularly if you consider their cause indefensible, but I don’t believe that we should censor those views; I think it is the purpose of art to make us look at uncomfortable things and understand our reaction to them, and there are vanishingly few songs in the canon which do that.

Ultimately, I do not believe that The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down celebrates anything; I believe it mourns senseless slaughter, and reminds us that those who fought for a cause we still find abhorrent 150 years later were people not demons. I believe it fulfils the promise of good art, to make the audience think. However, I also believe that there are those who will read it as a rallying cry for causes which should have been lost long ago, but we cannot start censoring art because it can be misused, any more than I can force everyone to read the lyrics the way I do. What we can do is to continue to have these conversations honestly and openly, and to understand that a song written in the wake of the great victories of the civil rights movement can easily have its meaning blurred by the political climate of the next generation.

If you know me at all, you know about the books. If you’ve ever seen my office – especially the new office – you’ll have noticed that there are books. A lot of books. Books I’ve read, re-read and loved; books I’ve read once; books I’ve yet to read, even books I read and didn’t enjoy – those ones are on the shelves because not only is it sinful to dispose of a book, even if it’s in a good cause, but also because one day I may decide that my inability
to enjoy the book was my fault, not the book’s, and try again.

Books furnish a room almost as much as they furnish the mind, and so I have a lot of books. It follows, you won’t be surprised to learn, that I spend time in bookshops –bookstores, I have to call them now, although I flit between the two almost at random, no doubt to the bafflement of my Canadian friends who wonder why I need to take my books in to be repaired.

Bookstores and I go back a long way. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know
where my nearest one was, and I definitely cannot remember a time when I could walk past the door of one on the way to somewhere else without a yearning to pause, peer in and – go on, just a minute or two, it can’t hurt – cross the threshold and be lost for a while. I can – and this has happened – spend entire days just visiting bookstores; indeed, back in the UK this summer, I drove at least a hundred miles out of my way just so I could go back to Hay-on-Wye, which is almost entirely made of bookstores.

You see how it is?

Different stores require different approaches; an old favourite second-hand store rewards careful scrutiny; head to where I know the good stuff is, then work my way round, being careful not to miss anything important on the way. Stores I haven’t been in before get sized up on entry – I can tell what kind of place it is within a minute or so of opening the door; I won’t give away all my secrets, but the number and location of orange Penguin spines is part of the assessment – and I either linger or move on in search of the next delight.

New bookstores require a different approach; in these, I will generally linger by the shiny new releases before going any further. Something will catch my eye, and I’ll read the blurb and sample the prose before moving on. At this point, one of two things will happen: I’ll be distracted by something else shinier nearby (the internal monologue goes something like “Ooh! I didn’t know he/she had a new book out”) or I’ll be set off on a path of discovery by something I just read.

The path of discovery will take me to all parts of the store, but in no particular order. Something about the way the first book is written, or the subject matter, or the name of a character, will lead me to look for something else entirely, and while hunting for that, I’ll be reminded that I read about another book a month ago which I meant to look up, and so on it goes. Entire afternoons can easily be lost this way, and large amounts of money can be inadvertently spent while I’m about it.

However, new book stores – particularly the chain stores, but, sadly, this also applies to some indies, and the rare second-hand store – often contain a device which will have me scurrying from the store in no time.

It’s called the staff.

Not you, of course, should you happen to work in a bookstore. Not you at all. It’s a particular kind of staff in a particular kind of store, and it’s not their fault, of course; they are only doing as they are told.

Some years ago, I encountered (sadly only in print; he was semi-mythical, and – come to think of it – may have been the invention of Iain Sinclair) a delightful fellow who went, for reasons which were never made clear, by the name drif field (sic). drif was a second-hand book dealer, and cataloguer of bookstores. He was, to put it mildly, idiosyncratic, but he knew what he was talking about. I have his guides to the second-hand bookstores of Britain on my shelves to this day (fat lot of use they are to me here in Canada, but the are works of art. They are also books, of course, and as such May Never Be Disposed Of).

The guides are wonderful, eccentric and very true. drif encountered pretty much every type of bookstore staff (he may, in fact, have met everyone who ever worked in one of
these stores), and he had an acronym for each of them. My favourite was the delightful F.A.R.T.S.

If a store was tainted with F.A.R.T.S., I knew at once it was not my kind of store, and was to be avoided, for I have a problem with this behaviour, and I think I know why.

If you were to film me as I wandered from bookstore to bookstore, the pattern would be similar in each; allow at least an hour for general browsing, plus decision-making time and ‘chatting with the staff as I try to justify to myself why I’m spending so much money on books’ time; the pattern will repeat wherever I am. Unless, of course, I am confronted by a member of staff. Then things change dramatically. There are two kinds of staff interaction in-store which will drive me away – F.A.R.T.S. and the generic and aggravating ‘Are you finding everything OK?’ interaction – I genuinely don’t know how to answer that question without seeming curmudgeonly, because it is only ever asked while I am reading the blurb on a book, or checking the index of a non-fiction title for references which will make me want to buy it; in either case, I am busy; I am book-shopping, and I do not wish to be disturbed.

Book-shopping is a serious business, not to be interrupted lightly, and I am certain that, if you were filming my every bookstore interaction, you would notice that the time I spend in store after I am interrupted can be measured in seconds rather than minutes.

Extreme, I know, but there it is – you broke the spell; you interrupted my serious business, and now I’m going to take my custom elsewhere. Sorry about that.

Oh, and F.A.R.T.S.?

Follows Around Recommending The Stock. Don’t do that. Just don’t.

And, yes, once I was thinking about it, I reckon I know why. I remember being about 14, and not at school having had the flu or some such – I was not a sickly child; this may have been one of the few times I genuinely was unwell, but by the time I decided, bored, to take the bus into town to go book shopping, I was probably well enough to go back to school.

Malingering, it’s called.

Anyway, there I was, minding my own business, browsing in that shop on the Upperkirkgate in Aberdeen which I can so nearly remember the name of when a member of staff – no doubt a parent, and with a keen eye for the truant – took it upon herself to interrogate me as to my reasons for not being in school. She interrupted my Serious Business, and made me feel awkward and aware that I did, in fact, have no excuse not to be in Double German right that minute.

I scurried from the shop and got back on the bus, scarred, as it turns out, for life.

So, it’s me, not you, bookstore staff. But please; I know that it says in the manual that you have to ‘engage with your customers’ – I understand you’re just doing your job. All I ask is that you look at it from my point of view; I’m in my sanctuary, the one place I count on to let my mind wander and explore; the place where I feel most at home among the insanity of the modern ‘retail experience’. If I look like I’m concentrating, it’s because I’m concentrating. If you can’t catch my eye, then pass on by.

And if you arrive behind me in your comfortable, rubber-soled shoes and I don’t know you’re there, ‘Are you finding everything OK?’ will cause me to drop the book I’m reading on my foot.

It didn’t feel right just to start back up after so long, so I’m acknowledging that I haven’t posted anything in here for months. Then I’m going to write something. Just, you know, to check I still can.

Edit: I started something, I really did. Then something happened, possibly related to the fact that I can’t use the backspace button in Chrome properly any more, because that is, apparently, an improvement, and what I had written (which was going to need an edit, but broadly, I rather liked) was no more.

I’m slightly miffed, but it’s not going to put me off. Just going to go about this a different way.

After much soul-searching, the beginning of Shore Leave finally has been rewritten. Of course, it has caused all manner of problems for the story down the road, and there will be harder days than this ahead while I try to untangle everything, but it’s back in motion, and I honestly wondered if I’d ever get this beast back on the road.

A little while ago, I was unsure about the wisdom of starting on the next book when this one isn’t finished yet.

(It’s getting there, I promise)

Well, now I’m also writing two books ahead. This is a Good Thing, I have decided, because:

a) I’ve never done that before, it should be interesting

b) I can get stuck in one place or another without it mattering too much, I’ll just go and work on the next one

c) I’m getting more actual writing done. I seem to remember that it’s the actual writing down of things which I enjoy rather than the ‘waiting for feedback’ or ‘damn, the first 13 pages are going to have to go’ parts which aren’t quite as much fun.

d) I have a feeling that time will at more of a premium in the next year than it has been this summer, when I got next to no writing done. I think that I should probably have some strategies in place to tackle that problem. This might be one of them.

… but this scene popped into my head fully-formed as I was taking the boys to school this morning. It would appear that I’ve started on the third book before the second one’s finished. I imagine this is a good thing, but I’m not certain. Anyway, this is what ‘A Little Bird Told Me’ looks like right now:

“So, would I have heard of you?”

I stare at her. I still know nothing about her aside from her name. She’s, what? Mid-thirties? Maybe older, I don’t know. I’ve never been good at ages. I shrug.

“I doubt it. We made three albums, back when that was still a thing, and we had one ‘hit’” – I actually do the thing with the waving fingers – “in the UK in 1983. So, no – probably not.”

“In the Ukraine?”

“UK. Britain. England.”

She smiles.

“Yeah, nobody calls it that. I think we know where England is, but UK? Nope.”

“It’s not England, but – you know what? Fine.”

I drain the cup. Fourth, fifth of the day? Jetlag and coffee; always such an interesting mix. I’m ready to close up, but she isn’t.

“Tell me more. What were you called? How famous are you really? Are we going to have groupies tracking you down?”

I want to laugh, but isn’t this the whole point? No-one knows where I am.

“No groupies. There never were many; we weren’t that kind of band.”

“What kind of band were you, then?”

“The kind which doesn’t attract groupies. Or women, much. The spotty teenage boy market, as far as I could see. Lengthy, technical songs with earnest lyrics about making the world a better place. Just at the point when everyone was making short, simple songs about cars and girls. We even wrote songs about that.”

“Could I look you up online? What would I find?”

She actually has her phone out now. I frown. Didn’t we have the conversation about how bad the internet access is out here?

“I just text my nephew and he does it. Come on, what were you called?”

I hate this part.

“We’re not there. There’s almost nothing, no Wikipedia, no online discography, nothing. We sold a few thousand albums and no-one remembers us, and that’s fine by me.”

She’s literally drumming her fingers on the countertop now.

“Fine. We were called The Undercrawlers.”

“Yeesh.”

I know. I always knew. We were called The Undercrawlers because none of us liked the name. Mark wanted to be Viking, or at a push, The Vikings. Fin wanted to be Tom Bombadil or something. I thought Us would work, but the other two laughed. We sat in Fin’s back room – he was the only one from a family well-to-do enough to have a second room on the ground floor for entertaining guests, and it was where the piano was – and argued for days, it seemed. I don’t remember who suggested it, but we all agreed it was horrible. So, of course, that was the name we chose.

We weren’t very bright, really.

After a flurry of typing, she’s back.

“You’re right. He says there are only a couple of mentions – a song called” – she peers at the screen, squinting slightly, and I mentally revise her age upwards a touch – “‘Nobody Loves You’ – no wonder nobody bought your records – and something about a lawsuit.”

That sounds about right. If anyone now knows anything about The Undercrawlers, it’s that we were the band who were sued out of existence by our own record company. It’s a long story.

“It’s a long story. And really not very interesting. Isn’t it time to close up yet? I’m a little tired.”

She grins.

“You go; I’ll finish up. I can show you how tomorrow. Have a good sleep, Mr. Rock Star.

I grunt. I never was a Rock Star. I definitely thought I wanted to be once upon a time though.

I spend most of that night staring at the ceiling thinking of what happened to Fin, and why it might have been my fault.

Second (technically third) draft done - structurally, it’s fairly sound, needs some plot tweaking and a lot of careful reading. Next draft will be following input form actual readers, and I hope will involve more recrafting than just writing everything out from scratch.